


Freeway Fires

by Pirateweasel



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fires, Other, Traffic, auto accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 04:09:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3276179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pirateweasel/pseuds/Pirateweasel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was an accident on the freeway.<br/>Does anyone stop to help?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freeway Fires

* * *

* * *

 

I had been driving down the freeway when the accident happened.  Another car going too fast, its driver losing control, smashing into first one car and then another; the chaos multiplying as those cars were knocked into even more cars.  One of those cars was mine.

When my car came to rest I could hear the blare of horns sounding continuously from engines damaged until the horn could not shut off.  I slowly lifted my head and tried to look around through the streamers of dust and smoke that blew past.

The freeway was not completely blocked.  The accident seemed to have mostly affected the traffic in the far right lanes and the freeway shoulder. In the two clear left hand lanes, cars were slowly driving by; slowing as their drivers and passengers gawked at the scene, then speeding up as they reached the last wrecked car.

No one stopped.

When I looked up, I could see a woman staring back at me as she leaned on her steering wheel for support; a shocked look and blood on her face.  A moment later, I saw the shimmer of heat rising from the seat behind her.

I tried my best to untangle myself from my seatbelt and move my seat back from where it had been shoved against the steering wheel; trying to get into a position to open my door and offer her help.  I couldn’t tell if she could hear me as I tried to yell to her to get out of her car…that her car was on fire.

She didn’t answer, rocking back and forth over her steering wheel.  I thought for a moment that she was crying, before I realized that she was struggling to free herself. She had become trapped somehow by her steering wheel.

I could see the panic on her face as she tried to call for help from the passing cars. I called for help too; but no one stopped. In the left hand lanes, drivers watched with horrified fascination as they passed us; yet none of them stopped to assist her.

In the back seat of the woman’s car, the heat shimmer had bloomed into small orange flames that were slowly licking up the back of the rear seat.  They moved like small, hungry red and yellow mice; eating away at the seat cushions and upholstery before nibbling away at the car’s headliner.  It wasn’t long until I could see wisps of smoke curling up from the very seat that the woman was trapped in.  I began screaming for help as loudly as I could, begging as I knew she must be for someone—anyone—to stop and help.

The cars continued to move past us in the left lane, only slowing to watch the spectacle unfolding before them; like the audience of the Coliseum must have done while watching early Christians and other victims being torn apart by lions. No one stopped to help.

I looked away from the left lanes and caught the frantic eye of the woman in the burning car and had the sickening realization that I was trapped in my car. I would be forced to watch, unable to help, as the woman in the car that had caught fire was burned alive. It was a horrible realization to come to.

It was almost as bad as the moment I understood that the frame I viewed the trapped woman through was the frame of my side mirror.

Why doesn’t someone stop to help?


End file.
